


Stand by Me

by HandsOfGold



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 22:55:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20919983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HandsOfGold/pseuds/HandsOfGold
Summary: Richie refuses to leave Eddie in the sewers...





	Stand by Me

"Richie... honey... he's dead."

They were dragging him away from Eddie (and he refused to say Eddie's body), or at least they were trying to drag him away (and he refused to leave). Because Richie Tozier could not, would not believe that Eddie Kaspbrak had died in It's lair amongst greywater and canalisation odours after nearly killing It. That was not the death Eddie deserved. Eddie deserved no death.

"Please, Bev, Ben, we can still help him. We have to get him out of here! Bill, don't you understand? Mike? Please..." he cried desperately as he held Eddie's bandaged face in his hand, cupping both of his cheeks. Blood wa sstill running out of Eddie's mouth, black in the darkness down here, and the faint white of his glassy, staring eyes reflected the little light that stemmed from somewhere in this darkness.

Somwhere - that was where the canalisation was breaking down. Somewhere was where daylight found a way into this gloomy hideaway. Somewhere was where they had to go now - where the others only, indeed, would go, because there was no way in hell Richie would leave Eddie alone in this place.

"Richie, we have to go," Beverly urged him, shaking Richie's shoulders.

"NO!" he screamed as loud as he could. With his eyes glowing with insanity and his wildly messed up curls he must look like an absolute madman to his friends but frankly, he did not care.

"Richie, we have to! Do you want to die here, too?"

"Too." That little word was that gave Richie the rest, and his hands wandered to Eddie's shoulders and shook him, shook him so that his blood got on Richie's glasses and his skin and his clothes and into his mouth, all those parts of him that Eddie could have touched-

"Too?" he repeated and his voice broke off into a whisper.

"He's not dead! Ben! He is not dead! Can't anyone see it? We have to get him to the surface, he'll be okay!"

A thunder in the distance signified the walls breaking in. Water rushed into It's lair, soon the Losers were knee deep in it.

"Richie, come with us."

They kept pulling him, his shoulders, his shirt, even his legs or at least that was what he felt. But he held onto Eddie, not willing to let him go again. He was not dead. Why did theey all fail to see it? In those eyes... in those eyes there was the shimmer of life, it had not caesed nor would it ever.

"Losers are supposed to stick together!" he cried out, and now there were tears of despair in his eyes.

"We can't leave him to die here!"

"He's already dead, Richie!" Bill shouted at him all of a sudden.

"There's nothing we can do to help him anymore. But all of us will die if we don't get out of here!"

Richie's hands went numb, then. It was Big Bill speaking, and if Bill, who hadn't accepted Georgie's death in months, was so convinced that Eddie was gone...

A hoarse sob broke out of Richie's throat and he covered his face with his hands. All he wanted to do was weep, and so he didn't even realize how the others put him onto his feet, how he started running, feet splashing in the water that was constantly growing higher and higher.

And then, at a fork in the tunnels under Derry, his glasses smudged with blood, dirt and his own fingerprints, it hit him like machine gun fire. He was leaving Eddie. He was leaving the man who... the man who... Richie sobbed again as the feelings he held for Eddie welled up in his breast and he looked at the Losers running and slowed his pace - and then he turned around and left his friends to be with Eddie, whom he had forgotten for years but without whom, after finding him again, he could not be.

As he reached him after what seemed like an eternity of stumbling through the endless tunnels, Eddie was in the water up to his throat. He was not standing up. Richie dropped to his knees until he was throat deep in the dirty water himself and cupped Eddie's cheeks again.

"Eddie... Eddie, I'm here", he whispered into Eddie's ears, above the roaring waters that broke in over them.

"We did it, Eds. We killed It. We did that. You too. You're so brave, Eds, and I knew you could do it. Now it's over. You just have to come with me and we'll be free."

Eddie did not answer. He must be unconscious, Richie thought, and one of his hands wandered to Eddie's throat - where it felt no pulse. Richie's hand sank down and he stared at Eddie's faint figure in the darkness with his lips slightly parted, holding the breath that was so superfluous now that Eddie would never breathe again. No, Eddie would never breathe again. Now Richie knew it, he knew that all they had said was true, and he also knew that he wanted to stay down here and find hid certain death at Eddie's side. And while around him all hell kept breaking loose, he leaned down to kiss Eddie'as uninjured cheek and whispered:

"See you on the other side, Eddie Spaghetti."

He knew how much Eddie had hated the names Richie had called him. But Richie, in his own way, had been coping with his suppressed feelings for Eddie that had plagued him since he'd been ten years old, feelings that he could never show in Derry, Maine, of the 1980s. But now it was 2016, and he should have told him, except that Eddie was married

(to his mother)

and Richie had no business of further disturbing his life after Mike had already done so with his call. But now Eddie was dead and gone and would never ever come back again, and Richie regretted every single opportunity he had not taken to confess this love to Eddie. Life was short, and Eddie's had been shorter. And Richie would never, not in the maybe last ten minutes of his life, forgive himself for never telling Eddie, as little as he would forgive Eddie for basically giving him an anxiety attack when he told him, after he had been impaled by the fucking clown, that he had to tell him something. Richie's heart had jumped and then Eddie had told him he'd fucked his mother... but what was the point of thinking about this now?

As the water threatened to swallow all of them, to carry Eddie away from Richie, Richie slung his arms around Eddie's waist. The water around them was significantly darker than the rest that filled the cave, and as Richie touched Eddie's torso he shivered upon feeling his broken ribs.

"Eds..." he whispered then, even though he had already said his parting words, and he really would have loved "See you on the other side, Eddie Spaghetti" to be his last words... but he never had told Eddie what feelings his heart held.

"Eds, I love you, hear me? I love you. I love you I love you I love you." And then he cried, his teras mingling with the water; he cried with his arms around Eddie, cried for all the lost moments that they never had shared and never would share, cried until...

Richie heard a weak but distinct coughing on his shoulder, and most importantly he felt it, and then Eddie's hands were on his shoulders, gripping him so weakly that it was almost concerning. Almost because... Eddie was dead, wasn't he?

"Eddie?" Richie whispeerd, then screamed his name and tore away from Eddie's embrace.

"Eds!"

"Hey Rich," Eddie croaked and his gaze wandered down his body to the pulsating, oozing wound that was still losing blood.

"It hurts..." he whispered and Richie could only fathom how much it must hurt because Eddie's head fell back and lolled to the side as he passed out again. But there was fire in his eyes, burning concerningly low yet it was there, and Richie knew he had to preserve it.

"I'll get you out of here, Eds," he whispered.

\---

"Ben... Ben, where's Richie? Where's Rich- oh no!" Beverly cried hysterically as the four remaining Losers stumbled out of the collapsing Neibolt Street 29. Mike and Bill were standing there, coughing out the dust of the house's debris, but upon Beverly's words they turned back towards the house, their old nemesis, and stared and stared and stared but Richie was nowheer to be seen.

But right as their hands entwined and tears rolled down Beverly's cheeks, as they held onto each other, barely more than half of the Loser's Club that would never be the same again, as the doorway of 29 Neibolt Street broke in, there was a figure, or rather two molten into each other, breaking through the debris and they could see Richie staggering towards them, Eddie in his arms, from whom blood was still dripping onto the dried out grass and the dusty path towards the house, and Richie's face was covered in blood and dirt just like his glasses, but he was alive and holding Eddie and crying out to them words that they could not understand through the noise of the collapsing house.

But when they approached the Losers could see just the faintest twitch of Eddie's hand that wrapped itself around Richie's, and that was when they knew.

\---

Richie stayed with Eddie, would not leave his side at the hospital bed. At first he was still thinking of how Sonia Kaspbrak would have reacted to seeing her son in this situation, but Sonia was dead and the thought soon pushed aside. The Losers came and went, and Eddie did not awake from his coma for more than a week, and all this time Richie sat at a chair next to his bed, slept in a bed next to his bed, and reached out for his hand whenever he thought there was a tiny movement or whenever he just felt like holding Eddie's hand, feeling skin on skin.

The day was bound to come that Eddie would wake up, but Richie was not so sure of that, and he feared the day when the heart rate monitor would go flat, beep beep, Richie, silencing him forever, for he knew that if this happened he would not want to live again.

Myra Kaspbrak came and went and Richie would not talk to her, and even though it infuriated her to see this strange ,an next to her husband all the time there was not much she could do, and all her screams and insults went into Richie's one ear and out of the other immediately.

Then, it was 11:43pm in the night of a day that Richie had lost count of; he was staring out of the window and holding Eddie's hand in the silence that was only disturbed by the steady beeping of the heart rate monitor, he could feel the faintest little movement in his hand and before he even could react there was Eddie's voice that transported him back to before all of this had happened, when he'd seen him again and the forgotten feelings had returned to his heart.

"R-Rich?" Eddie stuttered, and as if struck by lightning Richie let go of Eddie's hand - or at least he tried to, because Eddie's hand was all of a sudden wrapped around his own tight like a vise, with a power that Richie didn't even know Eddie possessed.

"Eddie!" Richie cried out with relief.

"Eddie, Eds, it's over now, it's almost over and done with. We've killed It!"

"Were you serious?" was the first thing Eddie asked, looking directly at Richie.

"About what?" Richie asked.

"About being married to your mom?"

"Fuck you, bro," Eddie said weakly but there was a plead in his eyes.

"Richie, I'm serious, were you?"

"About what?" Richie repeated, puzzled.

"About what you said down in the tunnels? Don't you remember? I love you I love you I love you?"

"Oh, th- you heard that? You were basically dead!" Richie's face had turned bright red, and for once there was no smartass reply he could give. His tongue was numb and frozen in his mouth.

"I heard it and I wanted to know whether you were serious!" Eddie glared at him now, but the pleading was still in his eyes.

"Not so impatient, Eddie Spaghetti," Richie said. He took a deep, deep breath and squeezed Eddie's hand as if it were an anchor that he could hold onto. Fuck, what did he have to lose?

"Yeah, I was," he said simply, anxiously waiting for Eddie's reply. Eddie said nothing, just stared at his face, and as mile bloomed in his.

"Trashmouth being serious! Well, then I'll be serious, too."

Eddie sat up, moaning as the pain overwhelmed him, but he would not sit down again, and he leaned in towards Richie's face and Richie hadn't even grasped what was happening when Eddie's lips touched his. It was a little kiss, but it held enough meaning for Richie to know that it wasn't destined to be the only one they shared.

And that was all he needed to know.


End file.
